When you buy a ship pack for Attack Wing, you usually get a “0” cost, skill 1 captain. For some factions I have up to 20 of these rarely taken “fillers”. They are not useless, but unless you are a tournament player looking for a cheap support ship, a “blocker”* or something to transport a clever gambit, who really wants to save a few points and fore-go a decent captain with a skill?
My intention is to have as few of these generics as possible, especially for the unique ship sets I have collected. There are lots of semi generic 3-7 skill captain cards around, so as long as they make sense and end up in different eras so there is no cross-contamination, no harm done. Semi-generic improved captains are not new (Somraw Captain, Tholian Pilot, Gorn Pilot, Xindi Councellor etc), so why not add as I can.
From here you must understand that;
We never play tournament games so those expectations are irrelevant (although many tournament players use any card from any era on any ship anyway, so same-same).
I rarely use Mirror universe ships as they are so limited (and of little interest), so these are “raided for parts” or re-purposed. Many of these have become useful to flash out the few Mirror ships I do use, or replace missing options in non-Mirror factions.
I hate being obsessed by hard to get, overpriced card stock with dodgy pictures and yet more ships, just to get the right text/cost/name, when the game is based on a quite fluid fiction franchise. A writer can simply come up with any name that sound ok, and its canon. For my game then, why can’t I?
I want to get I all I can out of the game. I paid for these bits, so I will use all I can get from them. No harm is done regardless as long as I work within canon and common sense.
No character may be on the table twice unless they are from a Mirror Universe faction and then the same limitation applies by faction, or rule 1 is in play**.
Much of this is only possible because Wizkids were quite consistent with their card layouts. They use the same font in about four sizes, there is always some black to cut into (then black pen the edge to hide the cut). They place most text and number boxes in the same place and they are usually the same size, especially for ships. There are exceptions, but not many.
Many cards are just a waste, or could they be a fix for the many holes I see in my set and as for chasing official offerings, after scanning the interwebs, freight alone kills of my desire to chase OP or rare cards.
Examples;
Somraw Captain of which I have four, is a decent 5 skill generic Klingon, except for the Somraw bit.
Two have become Klingon Captain and added to the TNG/DS9 sets, one has had his ability changed, the top pasted on an excess K’rell from the Gr’oth, the text of that card gifted to an excess TOM Gorkon from the Kronos 1 set and the last was left alone.
When I sold my Chang’s Bird of Prey, I lost a skill 7 Chang (you still get a skill 6 in the K1 pack and I have two of those). This was fixed using a Koloth card from the Gr’oth pack with a decent talent, an Elite slot and skill 7.
So, 4 captains from 4 identical cards, another Gorkon and Chang option and a re-used K’rell card. I then added a couple of 3 or 4 skill with ability captains to a couple of generics, one generic is clearly the Christopher Lloyd Kruge, so he got a small boost.
The Klingons in my TOM set are much better balanced now with 6 named captain options and some new crew.
A pair of Kronos One’s, both with tweaks. The one on the left is the TOM period one, with cloak, now two points cheaper. The one on the right is the TOS brute with the highest primary in that set, is dearer at it’s original value, but has no cloak.
Picking up some steam, I fixed my Andorian problem.
Only two ships was workable, but a single unique captain was not. A generic captain and a spare Talas crew card got promotions and I did a second Shran option using a logical Hirogen card. Both factions are militant and have similar ships, so the talents tend to line up well. I also re-badged an Andorian Helmsman from an Avenger Mirror pack and the TOS Mirror set got the Orion Tactician.
While I was at it, a generic Hirogen picked up a Gorn left over and I renamed an Alpha Hunter to Alpha Prime (I have 6 Hirogen ships, five now named).
Ok, what else needs fattening up or adjusting?
The Enterprise era Vulcans have several named ships added by using a mashup of existing names (Ni’Val > Ni’Pra, Kir’Shara > Re’Karr and the like). I may revisit this for more variety.
Some license taken and I think one actually stumble close to an actual Vulcan word.
My ISS Avenger from the Enterprise period became a USS Voyager NX-04 and the original Enterprise card (with Free Hull Plating) is now out of date with the new one available, so the late model NX-10 Federation is born, with Hull Plating as standard and named in honour of the burgeoning Federation (I was tempted to make it the Archer, but used both my cards).
The NX era ships now have four named versions with almost a dozen captains.
Under close scrutiny, I could have been more precise, but they can be popped off and re-laid if needed and in play, nobody notices. The neat ten was from an excess Iden captain card.
My Regents Flagship is now a pure Klingon giving me a second Negh’Var. Who the “Regent” is matters little in that volatile and ever changing Empire. Might come up with a different name for that one (Gowron or Martok?).
Plentiful excess Koraga’s are fine, about the only BOP easily found still. There are plenty of names to use and in some cases, they can become B’rels (only their Hull value needs changing).
This also fixes my Chang’s BOP stand-in, which from memory was a B’rel with a K’Vort dial, so basically convert a K’Vort and we are away. The ships ability to fire Torps while cloaked can be covered several other ways.
The Somraw has had a few generations now, but means “muscle” in Klingon, so a common theme. The Ves Batlh (“Honour Sword”) gets a second life as a Vor’Cha and the Hiro Kyan is completely made up.
The Marquis are a bit of a “one ship wonder” faction (without the long gone A Motley Fleet or rare OP packs) and I have four of them. I have added a Chakotay and Hudson option and the 3 generic captains are now a skill 3 (ex-Gorn) captain with free “Salvage” upgrade which feels like a Marquis thing, a (gnarly) scar face from a Mirror DS9 generic (prime candidate for Ramming Attack?) and the last is left in reserve.
Bit stuck for ship names, so I went with Hiro Kyan, maybe named after a famous Marquis freedom fighter? Bit over the whole French Revolution link with these and anyway, the class is actually Condor.
Almost an entire excess crew of Marquis have been recruited into the Voyager Feds (most pics have them in Federation uniform anyway and they are all canon!), adding to that range and also crewing the Val Jean as a hypothetical Delta Quadrant ally. Seska and Dolby also had no Voyager versions.
My TOS Feds were a little thin, especially now they have three unique ships, so the sole generic captain got a promotion to skill 4 and a free “1” move using an Admiral Gardner from Enterprise. Not a great skill or ability, but a mid range hole filled and ships in TOS are limited to speed 4, making his potentially the fastest ship in the set.
This, I realised too late actually used up my last skill 1, so I converted an excess Mirror generic with Pike picture into a Fed. No point in having no skill 1’s.
A second TOS Mirror ISS Enterprise is now USS Independent (not an actual ship name, but the class description on the generic Dauntless). I have used Federation, Dreadnaught, Hunter and Independent so far and they fit in fine.
For fun, I turned a Captain Spock from the Mirror pack into a Federation variant, a good option for the Vulcan crewed Intrepid in an expanded fleet. Not totally settled on the pic and I gifted a spare Live long and Prosper, or I could have used that pic.
I did the same with an excess Chekov as there is not one at all in the TOS Fed range (!?) and the picture and ability are close enough for the Prime universe. This is problematic I guess if the two Enterprises ever meet, so I will simply remove the clashing cards (or will I……).
I have no use for most Mirror packs with the exception of the TOS and Kelvin ones, so plenty of re-badging, pack swapping and the odd personality salvaged from the discards. Apart from Chekov and Spock above, I also found a use for Sisko, Black and Worf.
I recently found a set of “Red Shirt” and “Red Alert/Full Alert” OP cards on ebay with reasonable freight, which filled out the TOS crew slots. I can now fully build-out all of my TOS Fed ships, even a generic.
While I was at it I made a TOS Romulan Praetus and Klingon Somraw from Enterprise era cards (they have close to or the same stats), then came an Enterprise era Gal Gath’Thong.
I last butchered Gal Gath’Thong card has become the Gal (or Ga, not sure yet) on an excess Vo scout ship. Vo, Pi and Ga, sounds reasonable.
There is little I can do with the Xindi, Kazon, Borg single era limited factions, but needed fixes have been found and variation added, including a named Xindi Reptilian, the Dominus (part Dominion, part Praetus). I could have probably done the Xindus, which is canon, so maybe later or maybe a second named Insectoid ship? They also gained a captain or two.
This was one of those cases where the penny dropped a little slowly. I Cut up all my Orassin’s quickly before I thought of using them with different names, but no real harm done. One came the Rassin Bajoran scout, the other may become a Romulan Galorass or Klingon Gr’rass.
I then picked up another Ships of the Line faction pack.
This pack gave me excess Saber, Promethius, Sovereign and Akira class ships, so there is now a Dreadnaught (Cardassian drone > Promethius), Hunter (Alpha Hunter > Da Vinci) and two I am sitting on. I was going to do the Raider (ex-Saber), but smudged the card, so I went with Ni’Var, a Vulcan word for duality or of two worlds, which feels right.
I will sit on the rest for a while or maybe gift them to a friend.
These all feel right and fit well. I now have two Sabre and Prometheus models, so three choices of named ship each make sense (the Sovereign class already does and Akira’s are plentiful). The Ni’Var also got a new upgrade bar, hero-ing Tech as fits the Vulcan title. Either my second Cerberus or Sovereign will become a TOM Excelsior class.
My second Reman warbird has become the Shinzon.
I was lacking names in a similar large font, then realised my second Shinzon Captain card would never be used and it fit perfectly, so why not, surely his complicated ego warrants it? It has a fitting Borg ability to split its Primary attack and I changed the upgrade bar slightly to favour tech over Crew.
I then promoted an excess Reman Viceroy to a skill three captain with free Reman Bodyguards (ex-Vrax from Enterprise) so my second warbird can have an on-theme, if subordinate captain. The Remans can now be a strong faction on their own in a Romulan civil war game.
Lots of excess Romulan captains like three Enterprise era Valdores have had their abilities spread through other eras. Multi-era factions are great for this. His card is cheap with a mid range skill and a very Romulan talent (outflanking), so it gets a new face in an era or two.
Later periods are mostly just points adjustments (usually as changed by Wizkids), but a Somraw (Klingon for “muscle”) replaced my second Koraga (third on the way). My Romulan Scout and Science vessel costs now make more sense as do most periods.
This I have done by period, for example; the TNG battle sets are all using the new lower points costs, the DS9 named set is using the older ones.
Really the only cards that cannot be re-used are name specific ones like Lojur.
A second layer of card once sleeved is effectively invisible, so cosmetically it is better than anything short of Photo-shopping the cards and re-printing them, although I have learned to double check card tones and size as the new and old ones can differ slightly.
So far, I have added almost 100 new options, fixed points costs and balanced fleets across my collection and even made a few dream builds, all out of what was effectively excess junk stock. Conservatively, doing this with second hand and OP packs would have cost hundreds of dollars.
It has not stopped, because now I have a second wind chasing up all the commonly found remnants for parts and conversions.
*In X-Wing and Attack Wing, low skill pilots/captains are often called “blockers” because they have to move first, allowing them to foil the plans of better pilots/captains, by simply getting in the way.
**Rule 1 is used for some weaker faction games and allows upgrades up to the value of the ship point value to be bought even if they are over the icon limit. Only upgrades equal to icons available may be active at any one time, changing from face down to face up after dials are set. Inactive upgrades are dormant so cannot change status etc (no firing torps, then switching them out for another weapon and reloading them while inactive). Captains and crew may be duplicated on the same ship if they are the same faction, but if any effect disables or removes one, all versions share the same fate.